


For The Night Is Dark And Full Of Terrors.

by Copperonthetongue



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Being A Good Queen, Dany is in her feels, Diary/Journal, Grief/Mourning, Motherhood, Other, POV First Person, Post-Season/Series 07 Finale, Rulership, introspective, terrible decisions, the price of power
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-04
Updated: 2017-10-04
Packaged: 2019-01-09 00:13:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12264927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Copperonthetongue/pseuds/Copperonthetongue
Summary: The weight of a crown is not an easy thing to bear, especially when you are grieving the loss of a child.





	For The Night Is Dark And Full Of Terrors.

Copied from the private journal of Queen Daenerys Stormborn, First of her Name, Mother of Dragons, Breaker of Chains and Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea by the hand of Grand Maester Martin on the twenty sixth day of the seventh moon of the year 422 AL at the Grand Archive of the Citadel. 

 

*****************************************************  
15/4/ 341 AL 

Ser Jorah has begun to ask me why I sleep so little now and I confess that I find it impossible to provide him with the answers he seeks. The words simply will not come. It is almost is as if my tongue is made of lead and no matter how I wish that it was not all I can do when he asks is shake my head, avoid his eyes and keep my silence. Perversely I am at times grateful that it is so, because in my heart of hearts I fear that if I should open my lips, give voice to this terrible thing inside me then it will consume me utterly. Joined by the weight of all that I have done, all that has BEEN done to me in my short life the enormity of it all will break me apart, and I cannot allow that to happen. I must bear this burden alone and it does not matter that the burden of it is crushing me like a butterfly under a boot. 

 

A Queen cannot afford weakness, not when so many lives depend upon her choices....for when those choices are wrong the cost of them is paid in the blood of the innocent. The dearest beloved, like my poor Ser Barristan. He who crossed half the world to come to me to ask my forgiveness for his failure to save my family and for obeying the Usurper once he took the throne that he had bought with the bloody coin of my family's lives.he was the only person I had ever met that truly knew my brothers, my mad father and my poor mother who gave her life that I might be born. Without him I would never have known them, and they would have remained only distant, shadowy figures in my mind's eye. Characters in a story and not my kin. 

 

It was from Ser Barristan that I learned that my Mother loved to play the High Harp...that she sang my brothers to sleep every night and nursed them at her own breast instead of giving them to a wet nurse. That she had loved me before I was ever born. It was Barristan Selmy who spoke truth even when I did not wish to hear it and it was he who made me laugh even in the darkest of hours when I felt the most alone. It was from him I learned that Rhaegar was not the man my brother Viserys described to me as a child. He was no butcher, no mad creature unfit to sit the Iron Throne as Viserys and my father had been. Instead he adored music and loved the people he should have one day ruled, and they loved him in return. He would have been a good King and knowing that gave me hope that the blood I bear did not mean that the same madness that consumed my father and Viserys slept within me as well. Barristan The Bold was Westeros for me, and he died in an ally in a foreign city...murdered by villains who sought to end my life. Villains whose very lives I had spared and who then assumed that my kindness was a weakness and sought to use it to their advantage.

It was not the first time I had miscalculated by choosing mercy over death. The same foolish mistake was what robbed me of my Sun and Stars. My Drogo, who spared Mirri Maz Durr because I asked it of him...and who paid for my mistake with his life as it was she who in return for my kindness plotted his death, and then as if it was not enough to murder my husband she used her foul sorcery to kill the innocent babe in my womb in the name of her revenge. It was a terrible mistake that cost me the lives of those I cherished. Like a curse, the next that I lost was Irri, who was my first real friend. Who taught me what it meant to be a Khaleesi, how to be strong, when before all I had ever been was a tool. Frightened and helpless in the hands of others and fit only to be used, bought and sold or traded away by men in the name of their own ambitions. She died because I trusted Doreah, because I did not heed the signs of her treachery and her greed and my error almost cost me my dragons as well.

Now, I find myself once more awake in the small hours of the night, putting pen to paper instead of taking to my bed as I know I ought. I cannot bring myself to sleep, for in my slumber I have no defense against the ghosts which haunt and torment me for my many mistakes. The most recent of which feels as if it will be the thing that tears me asunder, shattering me like Myrish glass on a marble floor. Viserion. Even writing his name makes my heart ache as if there is a dagger inside me that I cannot remove, twisting with every breath I take.

I see him falling in my nightmares and I wake shaking and gasping for air in the darkest hours of the night, long before dawn makes even the faintest blush on the horizon. In those terrible, lonely moments when I am only Daenerys once more I wonder if perhaps this is not the punishment of the gods for my hubris; for my foolish pride which has once again cost me the life of someone I love. I should have heeded the words of Jon Snow long before I ever went north of the Wall. He tried to tell me, tried to warn me of the evil that awaited in the black cold beyond the Wall but to my everlasting shame I was so blinded by my own ambition and haughty pride that his warnings and pleas fell on deaf ears. I foolishly believed him to be like all the other powerful men that I have known in my life, full of cunning and ambition and self serving desire and I have never been more wrong about anything in all my life. He is a better man than any other I have ever known, save perhaps Ser Barristan Selmy. 

If ever a man was born to be a King it is Jon Snow. It matters not at all that he is a bastard, that this was not a role he was ever intended to play or a burden that he asked to bear. This duty has fallen onto his shoulders regardless of his own desires and he has risen to the occasion with a grace and humility that I cannot help but envy. I will never forget the day we met, when my many honorifics were recited and the response of Ser Davos was only " This is Jon Snow." and almost as if it was an afterthought adding " He's King in the North. " I did not know what to make of him, this solemn, dark eyed man who seemed to have no desire whatsoever to display his own power to match or eclipse my own. The truth was simple, he had no need to play at power because to his mind it is not only words that make a King or Queen but deeds and Jon Snow's deeds spoke eloquently for themselves. He had no need to announce his worth because it is so breathtakingly obvious to anyone who meets him. His selfless love for his people is staggering in it's magnitude, unlike many who are royal by birth this man, this bastard has learned the lesson that my bother Viserys and so many other Kings and Queens have failed to grasp. Kingdoms do not serve their ruler, it is Rulers who serve their Kingdoms...at least if they are at all fit to wear the crown they bear. 

When he fell through the ice, and the Wights dragged him under it felt as if a light had gone out in the world because he had left it. I cannot describe the joy I felt when the horns sounded and I saw his horse emerge from the trees beyond the wall. I found myself utterly unable to leave his side for fear that if I took my eyes off him I would never see him again so I watched as they stripped him of his frozen furs and at last learned the truth of Davos Seaworth's words. I saw with my own eyes the marks left behind by the Brothers of the Watch who had betrayed him, who had murdered him for the simple crime of doing what was RIGHT and not what was easy. For serving the greater good and putting aside old enmity in an effort to save us all. I was rendered breathless by the truth of him, of the man he was. The KING he was, and in that moment I decided that I would never again ask him to bend the knee. We would meet as equals and we would fight the Night King together, with no conditions or hidden costs. Yet the moment I was ready to give up my claim to the North without so much as a moments hesitation he gave up his crown and pledged me his loyalty. He gave away his Kingship, a thing that men and women have fought and died and murdered for like a hero out of the ballads that I once adored as a child. I believed such a man could not possibly be real and that such things only happened in songs and tales of fancy, for surely no man of flesh and blood could be so noble. I was wrong. 

I had earned his respect by my deeds, not by my words. I had earned his faith by my own sacrifice for the good of the people I seek to rule and I swear by the Old Gods and the New I will spend the rest of my days proving to him that I am worthy of the trust he has placed in me. I now find myself wishing that I had known Eddard Stark, the man who shaped the boy into the man Jon Snow became. If I had seen him so clearly sooner, Viserion would still be alive. Even Drogon sensed his worth before I did. Saw clearly the kind of man he was, and chose to bend his head so that Jon could stroke his nose gently, as if he feared that he might break or vanish, as gentle with him as one would be a newborn kitten rather than a Dragon who could swallow him in one bite or burn him to ash. It was something Drogon has never before permitted to anyone but me. Of the three, Drogon has always been the most aggressive and unpredictable. 

Had I not seen it with my own eyes I would never have believed he would allow such a thing. Yet he did...when Jon Snow reached out and touched him with his shaking hand there was no greed in his eyes, no resentment or envy. He looked at Drogon in wonder not in terror, and Drogon gentled for him. Chirping a quiet greeting. That was the beginning of the end for my poor heart, I fear. That was the moment I knew that I could love him, that perhaps I would have no choice in the matter. I am terrified of what that could mean, as those close to me are how my enemies choose to strike. They cannot reach me, and so they harm those I love instead. I will never forgive myself if that happens to Jon Snow. Losing Viserion has nearly broken me, losing Jon would be my end because he is I fear the only person who truly understand what my Dragons mean to me, the place they hold in my heart. Mother of Dragon is not simply a grand title. I am their mother, and they are my children in every way that truly matters. 

Many assume that because it is Drogon who carries me to battle, who is truly MINE in every part of himself that I do not feel the same love for Viserion and Rhaegal as I do for him. That somehow I love them less, and nothing could possibly be further from the truth. A mother loves all her children equally and I loved my little Viserion with all my heart. He was my sweetest, gentlest son, the kindest natured of all my dragons. It was he who sat in my lap, chirping as I stroked him to sleep during a thunderstorm so he would not be afraid, and who adored Irri with all his tiny heart. 

 

Now he has gone to join my sweet Rhaego in the Night Lands with Drogo to wait for me. The weight of the pain that causes robs me of my breath, and I feel as if I will drown in the flood of my own tears with the grief I feel at his loss. I named him for the brother I loved, but who did not love me in return, because he was everything Viserys was not but that I wished he had been. Now he's gone, just like the man I named him for. No matter what I do I cannot escape the memory of what happened beyond The Wall. It haunts me, waking and sleeping like a terrible shadow not even fire can banish, for every night when I close my eyes I cannot help but see it all again. Over and over until I feel as if I might go mad from the burden of it all. 

I watch him plummit from the sky again and again, trailing blood and fire behind him in a perverse mockery of the words of my House. I feel once more the agony of knowing that I cannot save him. I cannot protect him. I have failed him when he needed me most. He falls, and I scream inside as he vanishes beneath the ice forever. His fire guttering out as if it had never been. Lost along with everyone else I have loved. Drogon gives voice to my pain, because I do not dare. He wails as I wish I could, Rhaegal answering his cries with shrieks of rage and sorrow of his own. I cannot breathe, it is as if the whole world has stopped around me choking me as if I am beneath the ice with him, chilled to the bone and lost in darkness.

The sun is rising, I can see the pink blush of it's fingers as it pulls itself up toward the horizon. Soon enough , Tyrion will arrive to begin the day's duties as he always does, My handmaidens will come to help me dress and tend my hair and I must be Queen Daenerys once more and lock my feelings away so that I may serve my people. For if I fail now it is not only the Seven Kingdoms which will be destroyed, it is the world entirely. These pages are all that I have to give voice to my broken heart and my fears for what is to come and so it must stay, because that is what it means to be a Queen.

We depart for White Harbor at high tide, and I will face the Northerners who have no reason to trust me after the sins of my House and I fear that even Jon Snow will not be able to get them to see reason. May the Gods give me the strength to endure the wars to come, to do what is right and not what is easy. To be worthy of the crown I bear and the trust of those who follow me and who have put their faith in me to lead them well. To save us all, and to have mercy upon my battered heart and let me send no more of those I love to their deaths in the name of victory. 

 

Written by my own hand, on this fifteenth day of the fourth month in the year 341,  
Daenerys I Targaryen.


End file.
